Hamburg Noir

“You’ll have your city back, all nice and clean and ready to go to the dogs again.”

“You better be wiping the blood off your face before you go in, Mr. Kells.”

“Don’t be so sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be. That sort of reputation might be good for business.”

“It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.”

“Would you mind putting that gun away? My wife doesn’t mind, but I’m very timid.”

“They threw me off the haytruck about noon.”

“It looks like I’ll spend the rest of my life dead.”

“I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.”

“Joe Fabrini: ‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’
Cassie Hartley: ‘It saves a lot of time.’”

“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.”

“We didn’t exactly believe your story, Miss Wonderly. We believed your two hundred dollars. I mean, you paid us more than if you had been telling us the truth, and enough more to make it all right.”

“Customer: ‘Hotcakes and coffee.’
Waitress: ‘Is that all?’
Customer: ‘No, but the rest of it isn’t on the menu.’
Waitress: ‘You couldn’t afford it if it was.’”

“You’ve got something I never had. You’ve got me to watch out for you.”

“There’s one good thing in being a widow, isn’t there? You don’t have to ask your husband for money.”

“That’s all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.”

“Small puzzle pieces are never wrong You just look at them the wrong way.”

“I wondered what I was shot full of. Maybe something to keep me quiet. Maybe something to make me talk. Maybe both.”

“They say native Californians all come from Iowa.”

“It’s lavish, but I call it home.”

“Slim: ‘Who was the girl, Steve?’
Steve: ‘What girl?’
Slim: ‘The one who left you with such a high opinion of women. She must have been quite a gal.’”

“Money. You know what that is, the stuff you never have enough of. Little green things with George Washington’s picture that men slave for, commit crimes for, die for. It’s the stuff that has caused more trouble in the world than anything else we ever invented, simply because there’s too little of it.”

“Then quit howling! I know you romantic guys. One crack about the beautiful moon and you’re off to the races.”

“And then I saw her, coming out of the sun, and I knew why Whit didn’t care about that forty grand.”

“My daughters have the usual vices — plus a few they’ve invented themselves.”

“Devlin: ‘Don’t you need a coat?’
Alicia: ‘You’ll do.’”

“I was working in a hash house. You spend two years in a Los Angeles hash house and you’ll take the first guy that’s got a gold watch.”

“Maybe she was all right, and maybe Christmas comes in July. But I didn’t believe it.”

“If I’d been a ranch, they would have named me the Bar Nothing.”

“He was a ladykiller. But don’t get any ideas — I ain’t no lady.”

“You can’t just go around killing people whenever the notion strikes you. It’s not feasible.”

“My shark had torn himself from the hook, and the scent, or maybe the stain, it was, and him bleeding his life away drove the rest of them mad. Then the beasts go to eatin’ each other. In their frenzy, they ate at themselves. You could feel the lust of murder like a wind stinging your eyes, and you could smell the death, reeking up out of the sea. I never saw anything worse ... until this little picnic tonight. And you know, there wasn’t one of them sharks in the whole crazy pack that survived.”

“I will tell you about Mrs. Paradine. She’s bad. Bad to the bone.”

“It’s better to be a live coward than a dead hero.”

“She reminds me of the first woman who ever slapped my face.”

“The work of the police, like that of women, is never over.”

“I wasn’t strong enough to resist corruption, but I was strong enough to fight for a piece of it.”

“Oh, save it for the jury, Marty. Who do you think you’re kidding? I was brought up in the district too. I’ve heard that dialogue from you poolroom hotshots ever since I was ten years old. Get hip ... only suckers work ... don’t be a square ... stay with the smart money. Let the old man get the calluses digging the ditches. No food ... no clothes ... crummy tenements. You’re breaking my heart, Marty.”

“You’re the strangest husband I ever had.”

“Relax, can’t you? It’s simple. This is a retainer. You don’t do a thing for it. Nothing is what you do. If you keep on doing nothing for a reasonable length of time you get the same amount later on. That’s simple, isn’t it?”

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”

“In this world you turn the other cheek and you get hit with a lug wrench.”

“Joan: ‘Stop calling me Chiquita. You don’t say that to girls you don’t even know.’
Halliday: ‘Where I learned Spanish, you do.”

“Frank: ‘I want to report a murder.’
Detective: ‘Sit down. Where was the murder committed?’
Frank: ‘San Francisco, last night.’
Detective: ‘Who was murdered?’
Frank: ‘I was.’”

“She ain’t the type that makes a happy home.”

“I’m still big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”

“I used to live in a sewer. Now I live in a swamp. I’ve come up in the world.”

“Some people are better off dead. Like your wife and my father, for instance.”

“I don’t pray. Kneeling bags my nylons.”

“Bookie: ‘What’re you gonna do with all that dough?’
Winner: ‘Get an operation so I can play the violin again.’”

“Stay out of nightclubs. You might get your feelings hurt.”

“Taking his money was the only way I knew to make Dowser trust me. I folded the bill and tucked it into my watch pocket, separate from my other money, promising myself that at the earliest opportunity I’d bet it on the horses.”

“I see you had a misspent youth.”

“Why do you make me do it? You know I’m gonna make you talk.”

“Be smart, Charlie. Act dumb.”

“Home is where you come when you run out of places.”

“Sure, I’m meeting somebody. Just anybody handy as long as he’s a man.”

“You know something? You’re a pretty nice guy — for a girl.”

“You worked in a hotel, but you worked for the guests. Your earnings, your very job depended on their good will. So why offend a wealthy drunk by refusing to drink with him? Why snub a lovely and well-heeled widow when it was so easy to please her?”

“What’s on your mind? Like I didn’t know.”

“I never saw him before or after. I like a guy like that.”

“I’ll tell you something, Mrs. Anderson. I’d like to correct an erroneous impression you seem to have about me. I’m not at all stupid, Mrs. Anderson. I may sound like I am, but I’m really not.”

“What’s the matter? Were you out with a guy who thought no was a three-letter word?”

“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, rich is better.”

“Rhett Tanner: ‘What’s he got I don’t?’
Ellie Rhodes: ‘I dunno. I didn’t go to kindergarten with you.’”

“I was checking over some diving gear when a car rolled out of the end of the shed and stopped beside mine. It was a couple of tons of shining Cadillac, and there was a girl in it. She got out and closed the door and walked over to the edge of the pier with the unhurried smoothness of poured honey. ”

“You’ve got a great big dollar sign there where most women have a heart.”

“Maybe I’m gonna die. You’ve got even bigger problems — you’re gonna live.”

“That was where you made your mistake, Judy. You shouldn’t keep souvenirs of a killing. You shouldn’t have been that sentimental.”

“The customers go for it — it’s so old, it’s new.”

“What I like about you is you’re rock bottom. I wouldn’t expect you to understand this, but it’s a great comfort for a girl to know she could not possibly sink any lower.”

“Maxine: ‘Why don’t we go down to the beach?’
Rev. Shannon: ‘I can get down the hill, Maxine, but I’m not too sure about getting back up.’
Maxine: ‘I’ll get you back up, baby. I’ll always get you back up.’”

“A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults.”

“Evelyn: ‘What were you doing there?’
Jake: ‘Working for the District Attorney.’
Evelyn: ‘Doing what?’
Jake: ‘As little as possible.’
Evelyn: ‘The District Attorney gives his men advice like that?’
Jake: ‘They do in Chinatown.’”

“You’re not too smart are you? I like that in a man.”

“Listen to me, you dummy, I’m a cop. I make twelve thousand dollars a year, and I’m the highest paid guy on this street. I’ve got three dollars and sixty-five cents in my pocket. You want me too, I’ll take up a collection. You want a million dollars, you gotta wait.... You hurt anybody else and I’m gonna find out what you love the most and kill it. Your mother, your father, your dog. Don’t matter what it is, it’s dead.”

“It’s like some kind of a cross between Robin Hood and a cop. It just can’t work out too well.”

“Easy, walk out your door in the morning and you’re mixed up in something. The only thing you can really worry about is if you get mixed up to the top or not.”

“What I do for a living may not be very reputable. But I am. In this town I’m the leper with the most fingers.”

“I was driving south with this friend of mine, Jack Billingsley — I guess you know the Billingsleys, big real estate family? — and our car stalled, and I walked back to a garage to get help. So I get back with the tow-truck, and darned if that crazy Jack isn’t gone.”

“You’re much more intelligent than you appear to be, Lieutenant. Must be a big advantage in your field. In my field, everyone was always so desperate to seem cleverer than they were.”

“Go back to Jersey, sonny. This is the City of the Angels, and you haven’t got any wings.”

“If I’m not back in half an hour, you go see Reverend Lynch at First Methodist and you tell him what’s happened. Do NOT go to Father Callaway.”

“Honey, you only shoot people when they’re having their supper?”

“A man’s bookcase will tell you everything you’ll ever need to know about him.”

“If you wanted me to shoot you in the front, you shoulda run toward me.”

“Better a quick answer than a slow silence.”

“Sometimes you don’t see the line until you cross it.”